Production Team We have assembled a talented,
highly skilled and experienced production team that includes many award-winning
professionals: "
Your team and advisory board are first-rate."
– Larry Gelbart, Award winning writer of M*A*S*H, Tootsie, The Bob Hope Show, and Caesar's Hour
Ben Thum, Producer
Ben Thum, who conceived and developed the concept for A GIFT FOR LAUGHTER, is an award-winning radio and television producer and former Los Angeles talk show host. He produced and directed the documentary Alley Cracker: The Story of Handball, on the world's oldest game, which premiered on ESPN in September 2001. He was the creator and Executive Producer of pilot programs for The Rick Reynolds Show, a late-night television talk show entry.
Thum won the coveted Los Angeles Times "Golden Mike" award for best radio interview program three years in a row. He was a top-rated morning radio personality in Los Angeles and San Francisco for many years and a frequent judge of the San Francisco International Stand-Up Comedy Competition. He has interviewed scores of comedians for his radio programs including Myron Cohen, Mort Sahl, George Carlin and Richard Lewis.
Ben Thum is also a veteran narrator and character voice actor who has performed in a wide variety of documentary narrations and promotional campaigns. He has been researching A Gift For Laughter for several years.
Kate Amend, Editor
Kate Amend received the International Documentary Association's award for Outstanding Achievement in Editing for her work which includes two Academy Award-winning documentary features: Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and The Long Way Home. Amend also received the American Cinema Editors' Eddie award for Into The Arms of Strangers and edited the Oscar-nominated documentary short On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps to Freedom. Her recent film, Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, about the late actress Beah Richards, produced by Jonathan Demme, received the Grand Jury award at the AFI Film Festival, and received a 2005 Peabody Award. Cowboy Del Amor, a film she edited and co-produced, received both the Audience and Jury Awards at the 2005 South by Southwest Festival and was broadcast on Showtime in April 2006.
Amend is on the faculty of the Cinema Department at the University of Southern California and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Cinema Editors, and the International Documentary Association. She holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University.
Kenn Rabin, Film Archivist
Kenn Rabin has been a consultant, film researcher and writer on award-winning television shows, feature films and educational multimedia for twenty years. As film archivist for the groundbreaking public television series Vietnam: A Television History, Rabin supervised all media research and clearances and was the film researcher for the Emmy-winning final episode.
In 1988 Rabin received his first Emmy nomination for his work on the PBS series Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years. Highlights of his over 100 production and consulting credits include: The American Experience, American Masters, Frontline and Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS). Rabin continues to consult with educational and corporate media archives around the country and documentary filmmakers around the world.
Rabbi Sydney Mintz, Chair, Advisory Board
Sydney Mintz is an associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.
She was ordained in 1997 from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion in New York City, at which time she began her rabbinic career
at Temple Emanu-El. Rabbi Mintz grew up in Chicago and has been actively
involved in the Reform movement all of her life. Rabbi Mintz sits on the
Board of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis, Brandeis Hillel Day
School, and serves on the Reform Movement's Commission on Social Action.
She has lectured widely in the areas of Midrash, Jewish Humor and women
in Judaism. At Congregation Emanu-El Rabbi Mintz helped develop the award-winning
Late Shabbat, which serves the Young Adult Community of the Greater Bay
Area. Among her other pulpit responsibilities, Rabbi Mintz directs the
social justice programs of the Congregation and leads the family worship
services.. In 2004, Rabbi Mintz was chosen as a Fellow in the Center for
Rabbinic Education at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem.